Sassafras, Part 1



Joan

My phone rang. ‘I'm going to kill him,’ I thought as I flipped the phone open. "Where the hell are you, Frank? O'Brien has been calling every ten minutes wanting to know where you are. If you don't show up with those papers in fifteen minutes we're going to lose the sale, you asshole."

Frank had been working at Starburst Properties longer than me. I shouldn’t have to baby sit him like this. He knew how important those papers were. If he didn’t get them to Senator O’Brien’s office the entire redevelopment deal I had been working on for over a year would end up in the toilet. I could have continued like that for quite some time. I was pretty pissed. But I heard something, something that sounded like crying. Then I barely heard someone say my name, but not my real name, Joan Weaver. I heard Aunt Jo. Only Billy ever called me Aunt Jo. "Billy?" I said as I sat back down at my desk. "Billy, is everything ok?"

"She's dead. Mom's dead. I don't know what to do."

"What do you mean, Billy? Did Grandma have another stroke?" I asked. I thought of my mom, paralyzed from a stroke three years ago. She couldn't walk, could only use her left hand, and couldn't speak anything but gibberish. I had only visited her in the nursing home twice since she went in. Just the day she moved in, and then again last year on her birthday, but she didn't even know it was her birthday. I'm not even sure if she knew who I was. I know it sounds horrible, but I felt such a wave of relief run through me I had to sit back and hold on to the armrest of my chair.

"No, Aunt Jo, Mom's dead. Somebody ran her over last night. She's dead," he said and then someone else stared talking.

"Hello, this is Sara Kennedy. I'm your sister's neighbor. If there is anything I can do, you let me know. Billy's good friends with all my boys. Sometimes it seems like he lives at my house. Don't you worry about him."

"What happened?" I asked. ‘Jenny's dead?’ I thought. She can't be dead. This isn't right. Somebody made a mistake. Or maybe it's a joke. Billy's playing a joke on me.

"Well, nobody really knows what happened. They found her in front of Scott's Hardware this morning. She was already dead when they found her. They think somebody didn't see her, and then ran into her and left. It's awful, just horrible."

It seemed like she kept talking for an eternity. I just mumbled something a couple of times, and then told her I had to go, but after I hung up I just sat there, staring at the picture on the calendar above my desk. A little white kitten, tangled up in ribbons, with eyes as blue as Jenny's. Then I cried.

The phone rang again. It was Frank, but I couldn't hear what he was saying. It sounded like everything was muffled, unreal. I told him I had to go, and then hung up. A part of me still wanted to know why he had been late bringing the papers to Senator O'Brien, but most of me couldn't have cared less.

It took longer than I thought to get everything ready. I had to pack and find somebody to feed Tiger and Sophie, my cats, and water my plants. I would have just thrown open a bag of dry food and let them help them selves, and said to hell with the plants, but Sophie is old, and needs medicine every morning, and I didn't know how long I was going to be gone anyway. What if I ended up staying a couple of weeks? What if once I got there, I couldn't leave?

I realized I didn’t have any close friends. There were people at work I went to lunch with occasionally, and people in my apartment building I would say hi to when we passed in the hall, but no real friends. In 8 years I hadn’t made a single friend. I finally decided to ask June, an elderly lady who lived in an apartment on the same floor I did. It wouldn’t be out of her way to stop by my apartment and give Sophie her pill in the morning, and I knew she had a cat because I’d seen a bag of cat food in her little cart she pulled after her everywhere she went. She seemed suspicious when she answered her door, but when I told her about Jenny she said she would love to take care of Tiger and Sophie for me.

I thought about the little town Jenny lived in. Sassafras, Missouri was a dying town. It was barely hanging on for years, and then they extended a highway four years ago, and suddenly the traffic that used to flow down main street zoomed past Sassafras like a day old, crusted donut left all alone in the box. It wasn't a ghost town yet, but it was in intensive care. I had been glad to get out when I got this job in New York. Sure, I lived in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, and there was no sex in this city. I worked like a dog trying to make a name for myself so I could afford to get out of my little cell of an apartment and move somewhere bigger. Someplace with a window for each of the cats, and maybe one for me to look out of, too.

But not Jenny. She loved Sassafras. It was where we were born and raised. We went to school there and our father was buried there. So was Billy's dad, Bill Bota. He joined the Marines when he got out of high school. They married when he came home on leave, even though Jenny was still in high school. When she graduated she moved to the base he was stationed at, but right away he got sent up to Kuwait, and she couldn't stand the loneliness so she moved back home with Mom and me.

They really do send someone to tell you in person when a Marine dies. They don't just send a letter or call you and say I'm sorry, your son or husband is dead. They came to the diner Jenny worked at while she was waiting for Billy to come home and sweep her back off her feet. When they told her he was gone, she just stood there, with a tray of food for a couple of farmers in her hands, and then fainted, spilling biscuits and gravy all over the officer's uniform.

I don't think she ever left Sassafras after that. She just kept working at the diner, waiting tables and joking with the regulars. Everybody knew her, and those that could were generous with their tips, especially when they found out she was pregnant. Bill never even knew. She didn't want to tell him because she worried it would distract him, and she didn't think he was going to be over there very long, anyway. He would be home soon, and then she would surprise him. She called it Operation Diaper.